Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine

© Anna Galí - Old film photo showing my son Tomeu with a plastic skull, from the family photo album © Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project © Anna Galí - Somewhere near a place where he used to hang out with his friends. View all images ↓
View all images ↓
  • Dates
    2018 - 2023
  • Author
  • Topics Social Issues, Contemporary Issues, Archive
  • Location Barcelona, Spain
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The story of the hidden double life of my son, who died in 2017 at 18, due to overdose, reconstructed from the digital legacy found in his phone, laptop, social media and written diaries.

After an unexpected death of my son Tomeu in March 2017, at eighteen, due to overdose, and thanks to the new digital legacy we all leave these days -texts and images found in his phone, his laptop or his social network- I discovered a part of him that I didn’t know and that he hid behind his exceptional normality, someone who searched, using medicines and drugs, a way out of his discomfort in the world. This double life between reality and virtuality lies at the heart of Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine.

Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine it’s an essential part of my grief process, as I needed to try to understand my son in order to know whom I should remember, miss and keep on loving, but as well it’s a way of let him tell us about his own identity and story himself.

For his generation images have become a communicative act inserted in the “parallel universe” of the Internet. Their visual story is made from the very first film photos in the family album until the latest photos and videos, shared on Snapchat or Instagram (now also TikTok). Same happened with the expression of their desires, worries or frustrations, which have leapt from the paper notebook to the Internet and the social network. They are (we all are) more connected than ever, but also more alone than ever. And we, being parents, never get to know entirely our children, and it’s natural, but this generation gap has been growing along with the technology.

Using different sources (family archive, digital appropriation, texts written by him, personal documents, screenshots and my own images showing spaces that were meaningful for him, and some of his objects) Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine addresses issues such as our relationship with death or grief, along with the therapeutic power of the artistic practice, and it's also a call to investigate how we deal with addictions and to break prejudices around them, by showing the human story behind, and to raise awareness about the vulnerability and fragility of youth in the chaos of today's digital world. 

* Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine is a verse from Tomeu’s favourite song “Time” (David Bowie, Aladdin Sane) as well as the tittle of the “short autobiography” that he wrote in November 2016.

The work was awarded the Images Vevey Book Award Special Jury Prize 2023/24 (by jury chaired by photographer Paul Graham)

It was on show at Biennale Images Vevey 2024 and the photobook has been published in September 2024 by Éditions Images Vevey: https://www.images.ch/shop/en/products/anna-gali/

© Anna Galí - Old film photo showing my son Tomeu with a plastic skull, from the family photo album
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Old film photo showing my son Tomeu with a plastic skull, from the family photo album

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
© Anna Galí - Somewhere near a place where he used to hang out with his friends.
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Somewhere near a place where he used to hang out with his friends.

© Anna Galí - Selfie taken by him, found in his mobile phone after his death.
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Selfie taken by him, found in his mobile phone after his death.

© Anna Galí - Selfie taken by him, found on his secret instagram account
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Selfie taken by him, found on his secret instagram account

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
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Secret (hidden from family) instagram account in his mobile phone. He was coming out of the closet here, and facing up to some sort of "soft" bullying from some of his classmates.

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
© Anna Galí - Bathroom at his high school
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Bathroom at his high school

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
© Anna Galí - His favorite T-shirt. He used to wear it when he played at a piano concert (he played piano since his childhood)
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His favorite T-shirt. He used to wear it when he played at a piano concert (he played piano since his childhood)

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
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One of Tomeu's notebooks, a page written in September 2016 with his first "shopping list" of Research Chemicals and other drugs to buy online. And it was the beginning of going further down on the spiral.

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
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Plastic bag containing MDAI: synthetic molecule of the aminoindane class derived from the drug MDA, developed during the 1990s and with structural similarity to amphetamines). Found in my son's bedroom among many other drugs.

© Anna Galí - Pipe
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Pipe

© Anna Galí - Appropriated image, taken by him, of a foil with some drops of an unknown drug.
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Appropriated image, taken by him, of a foil with some drops of an unknown drug.

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
© Anna Galí - Hi bedroom at the students residence.
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Hi bedroom at the students residence.

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project
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My son's sunglasses and wallet, with his identity and credit cards, a photo of our (his) cat and a subway card showing his last travels.

© Anna Galí - Earphones and glasses in a plastic bag.
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Earphones and glasses in a plastic bag.

© Anna Galí - Image from the Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine photography project